Change

Driven

Some days things unfold in my life in a way that make me wonder why I am so certain that I need to diligently plan and work and try to make things come out right. Oh, I’m not suggesting that planning and working don’t sometimes pay off, don’t sometimes render hoped-for results. But when you follow the impulse that comes from a deep stillness without the smallest thought or a shadow of an expectation about the outcome and then watch as things effortlessly unfold in a way you would not even have dared imagine, it makes you question all this trying, this dark certainty that everything must be earned or fought for. It makes you consider grace and the blessings of a human life that are ours simply by virtue of being alive. It opens you to the possibility of real surprises. It reminds you of how limited our perspective is, of how we often can’t even imagine what is possible as we take a deep breath and plunge into another day[..]

But sometimes, unexpectedly, a quiet moment finds us and we drop down into the life we have beneath all the rushing and the trying and the endless daily details, sinking into the fertile soil of the sometimes neglected inner life, where the seeds of remembering what matters are planted. What comes from that place when we give it half a chance flowers in our lives and the world, creating unexpected changes in the direction of our journey and offering unanticipated blessings to us and those around us.

Excerpted from Opening the Invitation by Oriah